| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: absurd, he says, to imagine that the statue of a saint can speak,
and that an inanimate object not possessing the vocal organs should
be able to utter an articulate sound. Upon the other hand, he
protests against science imagining that, by explaining the natural
causes of things, it has explained away their transcendental
meaning. 'When the tears on the cheek of some holy statue have
been analysed into the moisture which certain temperatures produce
on wood and marble, it yet by no means follows that they were not a
sign of grief and mourning set there by God Himself.' When Lampon
saw in the prodigy of the one-horned ram the omen of the supreme
rule of Pericles, and when Anaxagoras showed that the abnormal
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Odyssey by Homer: by your own arrangement that Ulysses came home and took his
revenge upon the suitors? Do whatever you like, but I will tell
you what I think will be most reasonable arrangement. Now that
Ulysses is revenged, let them swear to a solemn covenant, in
virtue of which he shall continue to rule, while we cause the
others to forgive and forget the massacre of their sons and
brothers. Let them then all become friends as heretofore, and
let peace and plenty reign."
This was what Minerva was already eager to bring about, so down
she darted from off the topmost summits of Olympus.
Now when Laertes and the others had done dinner, Ulysses began
The Odyssey |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) by Dante Alighieri: And being conjoined, begins to operate,
Coagulating first, then vivifying
What for its matter it had made consistent.
The active virtue, being made a soul
As of a plant, (in so far different,
This on the way is, that arrived already,)
Then works so much, that now it moves and feels
Like a sea-fungus, and then undertakes
To organize the powers whose seed it is.
Now, Son, dilates and now distends itself
The virtue from the generator's heart,
The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) |
